Fast Hospital Birth

I decided when I was pregnant this time I would get a bit more educated. I really wanted to avoid the meds I felt had caused me so many problems the first time around. I heard about hypnobabies on one of the forums I’m on and decided that was the way to go. I listened to the scripts almost every night, but wasn’t very good about doing the practice (5 finger drops each day, etc) they talk about. Well, I have to say, it still worked.

My labor story is actually quite long. I began having some contractions on November 7. My mucous plug started coming out and I thought things were really getting going. I called my mom to drive up (2 hours) to take care of DS1 so we could go have a baby . I made cupcakes for the nurses and just got myself ready to go. Well, things petered out. I was 3 cm dilated on Monday when I went to my OB appointment. Let me tell you what a joy I was to be around over the next week as I continued to have to go to work and have contractions but nothing really progressed into real labor. By the end of the week, I had resigned myself to never having the baby.

I fell asleep early on Friday the 15th with my first son. I woke up about 1:30 and the baby was doing some really weird movement that hurt. After I got done pushing on him and telling him to stop, I felt some liquid. I still had to pee so I decided my water must have broken. DH was still up playing his game and I’ve never seen him shut down his laptop so fast. I was like it’s no big deal. I’m not even having contractions. We watched an episode of 30 Rock on the DVR during which I had 1 or 2 contractions and then I decided to go downstairs and make some brownies for the nurses. I called my sister and she insisted on coming over to be with DS. I was still in denial I was really in labor but told her to do what she wanted. While the brownies were baking, I took a shower, washed my hair, and shaved my legs. I then got the load of diaper laundry out of the dryer and got my DS1’s trainers all set for use while I was in the hospital. Then, I went back and french braided my hair. At this point, my sister had gotten to my house and kept telling me to go to the hospital as my contractions were like 3 minutes apart.

We got to the hospital at around 4:30 and had to go to triage where the nurses had me in a wheelchair and were ignoring me. I kept telling them I needed to get in, that my contractions were 2 minutes apart and my water had already broken. They finally got me in a room and 2 nurses had to check me as the first nurse couldn’t believe I was complete. I did ask for drugs about this time. I think the baby must have been posterior because the sensations in my back were pretty intense. I wasn’t able to get up on all 4s or do any of the different positions to turn him. I also wasn’t totally in hypnosis right then since I had gotten so agitated trying to get seen. The journey up to L&D wasn’t my favorite time, but it was bearable.

The doctor came in very shortly after I got to L&D and suggested I try to move to my back for pushing since I have babies with big heads and that would give him some more room to pass through my pelvis. That didn’t seem like a bad idea to me at the time so I gave it a try. My nurses were wonderful. They just stood back and watched. The one nurse applied a little pressure to my one knee once in awhile to remind me to keep my legs spread to give the baby plenty of room, but she never made any comments. I pushed for probably 20 minutes. It was the coolest thing ever feeling the baby moving down slowly and just breathing him out. I can’t even describe how amazing that was to me. It truly was a relief after making it through transition :). The nurses were all in awe of how I didn’t make any noise. I was just doing really deep breaths.